Hawk stopped by for a nice, long visit today!

I had an interesting encounter with "my" hawk today.  I was washing dishes and spotted him on the fence out back.  I saw him swoop down and head for the front yard, so I rushed, grabbed my camera, and waited.  He flew into our sumac tree, which hubby thinned out this morning.  Our gardener came and heavily pruned out mesquite tree, so now the hawk can easily fly through the front yard!  (That's NOT why we trimmed it...it was overhanging the fence and was growing out into the street and our driveway...)

ANYWAY...

A little sparrow had stopped by HIS (the hawk's) bird bath.  That tiny bird absolutely FROZE!  Old "eagle eye" was looking all over the yard and I'm SURE he knew the sparrow was there...the little bird didn't move a MUSCLE for about 20 minutes...finally, it flew off with the hawk in pursuit.  They zinged and zagged and the sparrow finally (in desperation) flew in between our trash cans!  HA!  The hawk, who was so mad by now, sat on our fence, then flew up to the telephone wire, came back to the mesquite and settled down.  I calmly opened the front door (I usually get photos of him from inside the house).  I walked out and took several photos of him.  He didn't seem to be afraid of me (or he was waiting to pounce on the sparrow)...he chirped at me, I chirped back at him.  We had quite a conversation!  I could see that he was panting, so I came back inside, thinking he would head over to the bird bath.  Nope.  He caught SOMETHING.  I'm thinking it might have been the sparrow....whatever it was, small feathers were drifting down from the mesquite and when I finally went out to investigate, he flew off (having devoured his prey).

That was my encounter today.  In the meantime, my thoroughbred, Quad, is colicking.  The vet came out, oiled him, but he still hasn't passed all the sand out of his intestines.  That's how I lost my beautiful palomino mare, Cali, a couple of years ago.  I hope Quad makes it.  Please send prayers.